SOLID GROUND: GODS OF CHAOS MC (BOOK TWO) (18 page)

“Yes!” she said, her voice shaking. 

“Stay here!” I said, yelling over my shoulder as I walked away.  “I have to get dressed.  Don’t fucking go anywhere, you hear me?”

“Darlin’,” she replied, her eyes focused squarely on my junk, “with a package like that I - well, I’m not going anywhere.”

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

They put something dark over my head as soon as the door slammed shut behind us.  I screamed, wiggled, tried to push them off of me. But they were so fucking strong.  One of them pressed his hand hard against my mouth, digging my tooth painfully into my lip.  I tasted blood, and struggled harder.

“We’ve got a fucking tiger on our hands here,” the man holding me grunted as he struggled to contain me.

“Just hold on to her.  We aren’t going far,” a deep voice boomed from the front seat.

I turned and kicked, my legs flailing wildly and aimlessly, looking for flesh to make contact with.  A resounding crack followed immediately by an angry grunt.

“You bitch! That fucking hurt!”  His hands gripped my arms tighter and he pushed me roughly against the seat.  He shifted beside me and I felt the cold, hard steel push against my temple.

“Try it again, bitch,” he snarled in my ear.  I swallowed, and stopped moving.  

“Don’t fucking shoot her, goddammit!” his companion warned.

“If she fucking kicks me one more time, I’m gonna off the little bitch.  I don’t give one fuck.  You know how I hate to be kicked!”  

“Alright, alright, shut the fuck up. We need her alive. We’re almost there.”

“I’m not kidding, bitch,” the man beside me pressed the gun harder into my flesh to make his point.  “Not a fucking muscle.”

I struggled to regain my breath, my adrenaline shooting through my brain, the panic threatening to overwhelm me.  I had to stay still.  I had to find a fucking way out of this.

What kind of stupid idiot was I?
 I had to leave the room without Riot.  I had to go get fucking breakfast!  
Breakfast!
 

Now, I was fucked.  Riot’s bike didn’t work, thanks to these two, probably, and there was no way he would ever find me. I didn’t even know if he heard me scream.  He was sound asleep when I left.

I was completely at their fucking mercy. 

All I had was myself, and that wasn’t much.

You killed Monty
, the voice sounded in my head.

Well, yeah, there was that.  Which is no doubt why these guys want to kill me. Or did they? He had said they wanted me alive. Why? What good was I to anyone alive? Especially Monty’s people.

Maybe I could get out of this somehow.  Maybe Riot had heard me, but I doubted it.

Maybe a fucking miracle will happen,
I thought sarcastically.  
Because miracles so frequently happened to Lacey Hope Carrington.

Fuck!

I cursed myself once again for leaving the room.  I had been so ridiculously blissed out from spending the night with Riot that I simply had not thought it through.   I should have known I was in danger. 

I did know!  I just…forgot for a minute.  I don’t know.  Of course people were looking for me. I had murdered a goddamned Mayor, for fuck’s sake.  And I knew the names of all his fucked up, perverted friends, several of whom would be very upset if I revealed those names to anyone.  

It didn’t matter that I had changed my appearance, had left town.  I knew they would stop at nothing to find me.  I didn’t know I was going to be the one that made it so  impossibly easy for them.

Riot is going to be so pissed off at me…

“Here we go,” the driver said, as the car slowed and turned right.  

“Get down!” The man holding me pushed me down to the floorboard roughly.  

“I’m going to pull up to the door, I’ll let you know when the coast is clear.”  The front door opened.  Slammed shut.  Footsteps.

Seemed like we waited forever, the seconds ticking by with only the sound of my panting in stereo in the sack over my head.  

The man shifted in the seat, then pulled the cloth from my head.  I looked up at him, his beady crow like eyes staring back at me angrily.  

“I’m not going to forget that kick, bitch,” he snarled.  “Now, we’re going to get out slowly.  No funny business, or I swear to you I will rip your fucking brains out of your pretty little head, and then go back for that pretty boyfriend of yours, you got me?”

I nodded, silently, my blood pumping so hard through my veins I was sure they would burst.

“Good.  Let’s go,” he said, opening the door, and pulling me out of the car.  I winced as the sun hit my eyes.  Swiftly, he ushered me past the car, and up to a door.  Quickly, I turned my head and saw we were at a motel off a fairly busy road.  I scanned the road, and saw no sign of Riot.

Of course not.  You’re fucked, remember?  You killed Monty.  Time to pay the price now…the voice had learned a few new words. 

The man shoved me over the threshold and I stumbled to the floor as he slammed the door behind me.

I smelled her before I saw her.  

Chanel number five. 

My eyes adjusted and I saw the black velvet stilettos right in front of my face.  Slowly, my eyes trailed up black-stockinged legs, the leopard print dress a vivid reminder of my past.  

She always loved leopard print.

By the time I reached her face, I was almost curious.  Years had passed, and time was, as predicted, not kind to her.

“Hey, baby,” she whispered, a sick, blood-red smile spreading across her weathered face, tightening the corners of her evil, dead eyes.

“Hey, Mom.”

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I threw all our shit into the reporter’s car, and we hauled ass down the street.  I called Ryder on the way.

I took a few deep breaths as the phone rang, trying to figure out what to say.  Hell, trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened.

How could Lacey be gone?  How the fuck could I have let that happen?  I had fallen asleep on the job, naively thinking she was safe if we were in bed together.  How the fuck did she get outside?

I knew that was going to be the first thing Ryder asked me, and I didn’t have an answer.

I was right.

I had barely gotten the words out that Lacey was taken and he asked exactly that.

“What the fuck? Why did you let her out of your sight, Riot?”

“I don’t know, man.  We - we - I was asleep.  I don’t know, she must have gotten up before me or something.  Pancakes, I think…I - fuck I don’t fucking know!”

“Pancakes? What the fuck are you talking about, goddammit?”  Ryder growled at me through the phone, and it took all my strength not to growl back.  There was nobody on this fucking Earth more angry than me right now, not even Ryder.

“Look, I think she went for breakfast,” I said, taking a deep breath, trying to explain myself better.  “I heard a scream, I woke up, and she wasn’t there.  When I ran outside, she had been shoved in the back of a car and driven away.  I saw some fucking pancakes on the ground, I don’t know.  Look, there’s more - that reporter, from the news the other day?”

“Reporter?  What the fuck, Riot?”

“I know - look, she was there - she saw everything, she said she had been following us.  She knows where the guys who took Lacey are staying.”

“What the fuck?” Ryder asked.

“I know, dude, listen, I’m in the car with her right now.  She’s taking me to their hotel.”

I looked over at her, trying to remember her name.

“What’s your fucking name?” I asked.

“I - I - gave you my card,” she replied.  She looked terrified, her hands shaking on the wheel. 

I glared at her.

“Diana. D-Diana T-T-Trudeau…” she said, finally.

“Her name is Diana Trudeau,” I continued, turning my attention back to Ryder.  “She’s taking me there now.  Where are we going?” I asked her.

“Oh…um…the Travelodge on Barbur Boulevard.”

“Brother, we’re headed to the Travelodge on Barbur Boulevard. I can fix this. I’ll get Lacey, I’ll save —,”

“— you’ll do no such thing, goddammit, Riot!”  Ryder interrupted.  “You fucking stay right there until the Gods get there.  We’ll be there in an hour.  You just fucking wait, you understand me?  You don’t know what you’re walking into.”

“Ryder, look, I understand, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to wait an hour.”

“You’ll fucking do what I say, Riot, or so help me god I will have your patch ripped away so fast your head will spin, you fucking understand me?  We’re a team.  I should have never let you go off by yourself.  You go in there, your dick half-cocked and your brain all full of some fucked-up sense of bravado and you’ll get your head blown off.  You’re outnumbered.  Just fucking wait, you understand me, goddammit?”

He was right.  I knew it.  I fucking hated it, but I knew it.

“Alright.  Fucking hurry, brother,” my voice cracked, my heart swelling with pain and worry and pure anxiety.  

“Please.”

“Sit tight, brother.  We’re gonna get your girl.”

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Slowly, I stood up, bringing myself to my full height, which wasn’t much, but it still allowed me to tower over her, even as she stood in her four-inch heels.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” I said, my voice calm, my heart exploding into painful pieces in my chest, as I looked down on the pathetic sack of flesh that brought me into this world.

“Oh, baby, you didn’t really think that, did you?”